PHI 8380 Philosophy of Imagination
At least since Plato identified the human ability to apprehend images as such in Book VI of the Republic, imagination in its various forms has been considered an essential psychological power. For Aristotle no thinking could take place without images; for neo-Platonism it allowed higher things to be glimpsed through material ones, but was also a fundamental source of error. Both rationalists and empiricists tried to domesticate it and in Kant, Idealism and Romanticism it turned into a power that allowed what is intelligible to appear (for example, through art) and in some cases even superseded reason. This course not only reviews the history of imagination, but also addresses what it is and how it is intrinsically related not just to sensation and reason but also feeling, emotion and will and is therefore omnipresent in the normal and extraordinary functions of human life.